A place where I'll post up some thoughts and ideas - especially on literature in education, children's literature in general, poetry, reading, writing, teaching and thoughts on current affairs.

Monday, 10 April 2017

Poem: Citizens of Nowhere

We may not have an anthem

we may not have a flagwe are the world of people who move, people who move on

we are called migrantsimmigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, stateless, no papers,on the run...we are, they say, a diasporawe are, they say, between culturesor a mosaic of culturessometimes we are, they say, rootless cosmopolitansor citizens of nowhere

sometimes they sayor we saywe are in exilebut that asks us to imagine we are spending all our timelooking back over our shoulder

we aresupposedly in a limbolacking somethingthat everyone else has gotand the only solution is for us to join in the anthemand grab the flagonly then will we become the real deal:a full human being

up until then they say we are divided, split peoplepeople who are less than wholejust hanging, suspendedin a state of longing for what’s been beforeand longing for something here that we can’t ever haveno matter how hard we try

but there’s no need to try: this ‘true state of being’ that can only be true when it’s a Not-migrant, Not-immigrantstate of being that we have to long for,

we can say we are the travellers and moversthe sometime settlers, the migrants, the immigrants, the diasporas, we existwe live, we work, we eat, we breathewe may look after otherswe may be looked afterwe may find lovelove may find usbut we don’t need shamewe don’t need guiltwe don’t need to hidewe don’t need to apologise we don’t need to beg or grovel

we are the world ofpeople who travelwe are people who leavepeople who move, people who arriveYes we can saywe have arrivedbut we may leave againand arrive againyou cannot sum us up as purely of one placesimply because we are in that placeyour snapshot of us may saywe are here it may say we are therehere or therethere or herebut in a life we might be both here AND there.in a family across generationsparents, grandparents, childrenwe might be both here AND therethere AND hereand we are not less for being so